


Trees

by Benny_IsA_Dog



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Asphyxiation, Blood, Canon Compliant, Extended Scene, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Gen, Hurt, Hurt Pidge | Katie Holt, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Metaphors, Missing Scene, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Near Death Experiences, Pidge | Katie Holt Whump, Pidge | Katie Holt-centric, Season/Series 07, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-11-16
Packaged: 2019-07-25 09:11:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16194497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Benny_IsA_Dog/pseuds/Benny_IsA_Dog
Summary: Chapter 1:Pidge was in the ground and high above it. She could see the oranges and browns swirling and blending through the hills and cliffs, and she could see every grain of sand.  The sun glared off the desert floor.Dirt and dust absorbed every little perturbation, making the desert quiet-- still. Instead, there was another sound, a soft murmur. It hummed from Green, and from the forest, the desert, from existence.Pidge listened to the quintessence that innervated everything.In the hum, she stretched._______Hurt and bleeding after the battle at the end of season 7, Pidge considers dying.





	1. Pidge

**Author's Note:**

> Chapters 1 and 2 are companion pieces of one another.

* * *

 

Green was getting even weaker. The extra consciousness in Pidge's head was now only a whisper.

 

“It's been an honor flying with you all.”

 

Pidge gripped her controls tighter. They were rattling under her palms.

 

“Now, everyone, give it everything you've got!”

 

Pidge flooded Green's thrusters with the last of the energy shared between them. It drained into nothing at the same instant the others’ did. Green shuddered into a glide, continuing forward on her momentum. The robeast drifted just barely ahead of them.

 

Pidge was sure. She had never been so sure of anything before. She could still feel the others’ resolve burning on the borders of her mind as she watched the blast hurtle towards Green's eyes.

 

Pressure displaced pressure and smashed into Green's walls, throwing her over and sideways. Conflicting inertias slammed Pidge's body against the pilot's seat, burst blood vessels in her abdomen, crushed lung tissue into her chest. The mental expanse that connected her and Green stayed intact until her brain hit her skull.

 

They landed in the forest.

 

Xxxx

 

The nearest tree was a young cottonwood, maybe only a decade or two old. The soft, living outside gave way quickly to the hardened, supporting core. Pidge crawled into its inside, feeling the individual layers that had built up over the years. Slowly, she followed it up, until she found limbs that split into branches that split further into leaves. The leaves were soft and wet, and the sun on their surfaces made Pidge feel warm.

 

A presence with the weight of a mountain joined her, spinning joyfully in the stems and veins. Pidge nudged the tree so that Green came dancing to her, and they met in a happy spark of quintessence.

 

A tall spruce had pushed itself through the gravelly soil nearby. Pidge leaped towards it, Green catching her halfway. Pidge touched against its gnarled bark and felt the sap slowly running underneath. Its branches ended in needles instead of leaves,   jealously guarding their water from leaking into the dry air.

 

(On another plane of awareness, Green was lying crumpled on her side, and Pidge was slumped at the bottom of the right-side console. She leaned against the floor, which rose vertically to meet the pilot's chair somewhere above her head. There, there was no difference between the dark of the cockpit and the black of her eyelids. There, she hadn’t moved since their long fall had ended.

 

Something was wrong-- she couldn't get enough air. Her chest hurt like her lungs had been burned to the inside of her ribs.  She was hunched over, most of her lying flat, but her head and shoulders were squeezed between her chest and the now inverted floor.  Her diaphragm struggled against her abdomen, and her throat ached as it forced whatever air possible in and then out. Every breath pushed broken lungs against broken tissues against broken organs. Each one reminded her that it might just be better to leave all these broken pieces behind.

 

She needed to move. She needed to get up. She needed to pick herself up so her body didn't pinch itself into suffocation. But that would mean moving her broken pieces, and that would hurt even more.

 

She was so tired.)

 

Pidge pushed them further. An oak drew them in, the largest tree in the forest. It felt old and gave off a general aura of strength. Pidge climbed into its branches, arching into the sky like she were begging it to pick them up again. She enjoyed the giddy feeling of the height.  Eventually, she followed the tree's inner network to its roots. The roots extended further than she would have guessed, and she reached deep into the earth and rested there with Green until the sky was a distant memory.

 

(There was something in her mouth. Blood was oozing from some unknown place, pooling around her tongue, filling towards the back of her throat.)

 

They slid into the grass. They crept into the underbrush. They drifted into the little creatures cowering in their burrows and holes from the strange, massive thingthat had crashed from the sky. At the edge of the forest, they continued, joining the cacti and shrubs and dust of the desert.

 

(The blood leaked into her throat, blocking the airway she had left. Her lungs burned and spasmed to try to push it back out.)

 

Pidge knew she should try to save herself. Pidge knew-- in the part of herself that hurt and burned and ached--that she should try to live. But, in the part of herself that was spread  through the landscape, she also knew it would be easier-- so much less painful-- to let herself stretch further and further, until she dissolved with Green into the quintessence of the forest and desert. Then, neither of them would ever need to feel anything again.

 

(Her chest, abdomen head, and arms jerked, lighting up with pain that would tear them apart. The spasm ended in a gurgling moan before she had to suck in more blood and air and try to cough again.)

 

Pidge turned to the desert.

 

It extended for miles and miles beneath them. Pidge expanded outwards, watching as the valley whipped past.  With each of those miles, she felt a little thinner--a little less defined, a little less real. Green’s presence became diffuse, leaking into the air and earth, gently tugging Pidge with her.

 

Pidge was in the ground and high above it. She could see the oranges and browns swirling and blending through the hills and cliffs, and she could see every grain of sand.  The sun glared off the desert floor. Dirt and dust absorbed every little perturbation, making the desert quiet-- still. Instead, there was another sound, a soft murmur. It hummed from Green, and from the forest, the desert, from existence.

 

Pidge listened to the quintessence that innervated everything.

 

In the hum, she stretched.

 

 

 

There was something else. A new energy, bright and full of color.

 

It came from different directions. The color blue coursed and murmured from a lake from the west, both a part of the water and something separate. Beneath Pidge, deep in the soil and bedrock, there was yellow, and, further down, magma moved with red that churned in the impossibly slow heartbeat of the planet. Black erupted into the air from someplace to the north, and it continued far into the sky until it joined the stars.

 

Each one coalesced at its own deep scar in the earth, each gash still warm from incredible impacts. The colors pulsed with bottomless awareness in notes and rhythms that harmonized with Green's. At their centers, they wrapped around points of intense brightness, melding into them so there was no boundary between them and blinding white.

 

These points were familiar. They each seemed a little less vivid than they should be-- like they were maybe smudged or cracked-- but Pidge knew them. They each felt weighted, significant, like four of five pieces of a greater whole. They were still shining. They were still burning.

 

They were still alive. They were still here.

 

Pidge paused. The realization tugged at her, dragging a corner of her thinning thoughts back together.

 

_They were here._

 

The points dragged at Pidge. They pulled, but not further into the desert, towards them, but back to where Green's body lay in the forest-- and she felt a yearning to follow that pull. It was the same yearning she'd felt when she'd first climbed into Green, a yearning that would scream the loudest right before they would all join as Voltron.

 

Pidge slipped back, and the desert began to recede.

 

She remembered, now. They were here.  The other Paladins-- her friends-- were there. They were all on Earth, and they'd protected it…. Earth was safe. Her family was here, too, weren’t they? Her mom and dad were on the Atlas, and Matt was maybe only a transmission away.  They were waiting for her-- they were all waiting. She just had to go back to them.

 

The edge of Pidge's mind crossed back into the forest.

 

Pidge wanted to be with her team, who'd slowly become a part of her-- she couldn't leave them behind. And she wanted to be with her family, who were finally almost back together again.

 

She wanted to live. She was sure. She had never been so sure of anything before.

 

She let go of the trees.

 

The full sensation of her body slammed back to Pidge’s attention. It was suddenly impossible to ignore the armour digging into her side and back, or how her chest screamed like it was being crushed.

 

Pidge gasped raggedly for air. Instead, her body coughed against incoming blood, fighting gravity with what little power her lungs could still find. Small flecks of the blood splattered against the inside of the visor of her helmet and fell back onto her face. Her lungs inhaled again sharply, out of her control, but only drew in more blood before her crumpled position stopped them from inflating.

 

Pidge turned her head, but her chin was stopped by her shoulder. She pried her arm from her side and pressed her hand against the upturned console beneath her. She ignored the pain from moving in favor of the pain for air. With as much strength as she had left, she pushed.

 

She fell sideways to the ground,  slamming her shoulder so her lungs felt like they'd shake out of her torso. Blood spilled out of her mouth and into the inside of her visor. It pooled around her chin. The visor dissipated automatically, and the blood splashed onto the console.

 

After the first fresh gulp of air, her lungs kept gasping frantically, her diaphragm still caught against her stomach. Pidge inched her feet along the console, unfolding herself to lie straight. Finally, she was able to get something close to a full breath.

 

Pidge lay still with her head against the console. Slowly, her breathing became more regular, each rasp beating softly against the metal. The sound tapered off into the silence of the cockpit, smothered by the empty darkness. She looked towards the viewports behind Green's eyes.

 

 _Green?_ she called. The screens stayed blank.

 

Pidge closed her eyes. She took another slow, stabilizing breath. Carefully, she focused on the weight that rested in the back of her mind and reached to out to it.

 

 _Green?_ _Are you there?_

 

Slowly, the weight rippled from her touch as Green shifted. Her outward momentum slowed under Pidge’s attention .

 

Pidge grasped at her as hard as she could.  She squeezed, until a little bit of the energy she could gather broke free and seeped in.  Green moved more, faster. She rolled in from the forest, gathering infinitesimally small fragments of borrowed quintessence from the trees, grasses, and earth as she passed.

 

When Green came back, her arrival vibrated in the walls and structure of the cockpit. It swept through Pidge's bones and broken pieces, and in her head and in her being. The air rang with a quiet proclamation-- an urging that Green sent in earnest answer to her Paladin.

 

_Here. She was here._

 

The screens behind Green's eyes turned on. The console computers started up in a low whirr, illuminating the cockpit in green, muted light.

 

Pidge laughed-- a weak, choppy sigh. Tears knocked from her face as she smiled.

 

 _Hey, Green_ , she thought. _I'm here, too._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes dying feels the right thing to do. During the weeks I was writing this, a person in my life committed suicide.  
> Reach out, find help.
> 
> Thanks for reading. Let me know what you think!


	2. Colleen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2:
> 
> The middle of the Lion's snout reached past Colleen's head. The glowing eye looked down at her, with a measured, piercing attention that made her feel small and inconsequential. The metal sheets lining its face gleamed in the sun, flashing with tones of some things natural and logical, and some things magical and unexplained. It reflected back life in its whites, power in its silvers, and determination and bravery and strength in its greens.
> 
> It looked so much like Katie.
> 
> _____________________
> 
> After the battle at the end of season 7, Colleen Holt demands her way onto an ambulatory unit and is one of the first people to the Green Lion.
> 
> _____________________

 

“It’s been an honor flying with you all.”

 

Colleen’s knuckles had turned white around the communicator that Sam had given her. It crackled as the Lions climbed into the upper layers of the atmosphere.

 

“Now, everyone, give it everything you've got!”

 

The voices from the bridge had gone silent in helpless waiting.

 

The comm _exploded_ \--

 

(The world exploded.)

 

\--and cut out.

 

People on the bridge gasped. The floor beneath her swayed.  Quiet, empty seconds passed--filled with helpless waiting. 

 

A rumbling shook the Atlas. Startled screams came from the McClains clustered in the seats around Colleen, and from the rows of scared civilians behind her. The floor tilted again, and there were more screams, now from the comm-- officers shouting to one another, to the captain. The straps holding her into the emergency seat dug into her shoulders. Lights flashed over the rows of seats in warning. The Atlas groaned as walls and supports and entire corridors began shifting back into their original position. Their protective room shook over and over as incomprehensible tons of steel slammed together.

 

The shifting stopped, then lights and the alarms. One of the McClain children asked a whispered question, and got no reply. The comm began clambering with a mesh of indistinct voices.

 

“ _\-- aren't receiving signals--_ ”

 

“ _\--landed in different locations_ \--”

 

“ _\--massive impact forces--_ ”

 

Colleen undid the straps holding her into the emergency seat. She stood up and stumbled to the door leading to the rest of the ship. One voice came through the others, taking charge, bringing order.

 

“ _Start a status check of all personnel and systems,_ ” It was Iverson. Not Shiro, not Coran, not Sam. “ _Find somewhere to land and take us down.”_

 

Colleen opened the door. A pair of soldiers sprinted past and down the hall.  Another voice boomed through the public announcement system. _“_ **_All civilian personnel are to remain in lockdown positions_ ** **\--** ”

 

“Ma’am!” the soldier--the scared kid-- in charge of the group yelled, “Stay here-- they want us to stay here!”

 

Colleen paused in the doorway. They wanted her to stay, to keep waiting.

 

“ _Recovery units are to be dispatched immediately._ _MFEs provide cover.”_

“Ma’am!”

 

“ _Recovery Unit One to the Black Lion, coordinates being sent--_ ”

 

Colleen gripped the little comm tightly in her hand, and she ran. She sprinted down the hall, and the white walls soon widened into the main thoroughfare that stretched up and down the ship, boiling with crew and officers alike rushing to new tasks.

 

_“--Unit Two to the Yellow--”_

 

Colleen pushed into the crowd, in the direction that lead further into the bowels of the ship, away from the bridge.  She dodged between a group of engineers and a pair of controllers.Her shoulder slammed into an unknown lieutenant. The doors to the lower hangars opened from an offshoot corridor crowded with pilots and mechanics.

 

_“--Unit Three to the Green--”_

The hanger that housed the land recovery vehicles was a massive garage lined with a dozen bay doors. Tank-like all-terrain trucks were parked by each, with large numbers plastered on their sides. Crews were boarding, arranging, guiding-- the door with a gleaming number “one” had started to open. The truck with the number “three” was still being boarded-- by medics, by firefighters, by men and women trained to cut through the twisted and burned shapes of shattered ships and planes to reach whatever was left inside. As Colleen ran to it, an arm was thrown out to catch her.

 

“Dr. Holt?” The unit controller--equipped with a headset, information, and authority-- had stopped her as she'd run past. He looked down at her, face pinched in confused concern. “You're a civilian-- you're supposed to be in lockdown.”

 

Colleen pushed his hand away, but he side-stepped to block her.

 

“Dr. Holt, no, you have to wait here.”

 

She turned to the side, pivoted around him, and ran for the truck. He grabbed her arm after only a few paces, pulling her to a stop.

 

“Let go!”  She twisted, but his fingers dug tighter.

 

“Dr. Holt, _please!_ ” His sounded emphatic, sad-- as if what that truck would find was a foregone inevitably. As if there was some certainty that he could know that she didn't.

 

_“Let me go!”_

 

“Let her come.”

 

The controller turned. A woman stood at the front of the truck as crew continued to load supplies behind her.  Her uniform was emblazoned with the extra yellow stripe of rank that marked her as the lead medic, the commanding officer of the unit. The controller and the medic locked eyes, deliberating with each other -- about Colleen, about her daughter. Making Colleen's decisions for her.

 

He let go. Colleen climbed into the truck behind a woman carrying a cooled load of packaged  blood.

 

The unit pulled away from the hangar. She stood near the front, behind the driver and beside the unit lead, holding a plastic handle hanging from the ceiling. The ground rose up in jagged splinters under the weight of the Atlas, then smoothed into dry and cracked undulating swells that made the truck buck and jolt as it summited them. The crew finished the few tasks that hadn't been completed before departure. The unit lead instructed the driver to an advisable route. Colleen watched the horizon as it bobbed and shook over the top of the dashboard, and she waited for it to splinter with the silhouette of nearing wreckage.

 

The dirt and shrubs of the desert became dotted with taller succulents, then scattered with trees. Then, the trees became denser, slowing their progress and hindering their view. The crew stood in inactive attention by their gear. The unit lead completed her procedural checklists. Colleen waited.

 

The navigation screen showed the target coordinates getting closer, and moment after moment stretched until she was sure the next would never come. And she waited.

 

When the blinking dots on the screen converged, Colleen was at the door-- she didn't remember letting go of the handle or her little comm, or when she had started pounding at the reinforced closing mechanisms like she could peel them back with her bare fingers. The lead came up behind her, trying to tell her something. The latches retracted and the door slid out of her way. Colleen  jumped from the truck before the exit ramp had finished descending. She hit the ground, stumbled. Trees had been crushed and upturned as the ground had rippled outward, leaving a gaping stretch of sky. A slope of broken earth reared far above the truck. Dirt slipped under her feet as she ran up.

 

The Lion was lying on its side. It was facing her, so the top of its upturned jaw rested only a few feet below her.  Broken, motionless, a shadow of the machine she had watched on Sam’s videos. It wasn’t supposed to look like this--it was supposed to be powerful. It was supposed to be magnificent.

 

Colleen fell to her hands and knees. The ground was still warm from the impact.

 

Its legs were twisted unnaturally. That wasn’t right. None of it was right. Katie said it would be _beautiful._

 

Its back arched above her head, its shoulder imbedded deep into the ground where it had hit with a force great enough to displace the earth like water.

 

She had waited for so long. Katie had just come home. _She’d just come home._

 

Its paws were trapped beneath it. Its neck was bent into the side of the crater. Its head was half buried, its face was slashed with scorch marks, and the eye still exposed...

 

...it was glowing.

 

Colleen froze .

 

The Lion was awake.

 

Colleen stood up. Her feet sent rocks and dirt littering down over the Lion’s nose.  The Lion was awake _\--_ it’s eyes were glowing, filled with a presence that stared back at her with careful attention. It was watching her.

 

But it wasn't just the Lion, was it? The presence was alien to Colleen, but it was also, somehow, familiar. She had never seen it before, and yet she had known it for nineteen years. Katie was there, watching her, through the eyes of this Green Lion. She was gathering careful information, with that measuring gaze Colleen had first admired when she was small and new to the world and only just figuring out how it worked.  It was a gaze Colleen had missed so much for so many years. Then it had returned-- miraculously-- in the young soldier and leader and hero in whom the world had put all its last hope.

 

“Colleen?”

 

The unit lead had followed behind her. She was watching her, face drawn, and arm outstretched as if ready to hold her back from the wreckage.

 

“Colleen,” she repeated, “I don't know what we're going to find in there.”

 

Colleen shook her head. “No, look at her eyes” she said, softly. She turned back to the Lion. “She's still alive.”

 

She stepped off the edge of the crater, before the lead could hold her back. She slid down the incline to stand in front of it. There, the middle of its snout reached past her head. The glowing eye looked down at her, with a measured, piercing attention that made her feel small and inconsequential. The metal sheets lining its face gleamed in the sun, flashing with tones of some things natural and logical, and some things magical and unexplained. It reflected back life in its whites, power in its silvers, and determination and bravery and strength in its greens.

 

It looked so much like Katie.

 

Colleen understood now-- for years and years she hadn't seen it, but she did, now--like the last pieces of a puzzle that she hadn't known were missing had finally fallen into place. This Lion had been a piece of Katie since long before she'd left Earth-- since the second she was born-- and Katie had been a piece of it. Now, Colleen could hear how every laugh and outburst had been filled with the roar of a lion. Now, she felt how every challenge and question had been met with the reaching, steady tenacity of the trees growing in a forest. Now, she saw how every smile and tear and touch had been backed by the passion of a person destined to save the universe.

 

Colleen placed her hand on the outside of the Lion’s mouth. Katie was here, in the spirit and body of the massive machine in front of her, irrevocably intertwined. Colleen was with her daughter, for whom she’d waited for four years. For whom she'd wait for a thousand years and more.

 

“Katie?” she whispered, “I'm here. It's over. Everything's going to be okay, now.” 

 

And she waited.

 

The Lion moved. It opened its mouth.

 

The jaw carved sideways into the dirt, partially revealing a port at the back of its throat. The lead yelled to the rest of the unit behind her. Colleen stepped to the side so they could move past with their stretcher and braces and stabilizers. She kept her hand pressed against the metal. The medics climbed carefully into the mouth, crouching single file. The first two disappeared into the port, and the stretcher was passed forward.  As they came back out, the other medics rushed forward to help, their bodies hiding the person on the stretcher. Colleen climbed after them up the hill, and as she crested the lip of the crater, the Lion made a sound-- a hushed rumble of relief and satisfaction-- and the eyes went dark.

 

She was the last into the truck, guided in by the until lead. Between the backs of the medics, there were flashes of green and black and red. The truck was filled with the sound of the engine, urgent directions, and the beeps and hisses of medical machines. Colleen pushed into the line, and the medic at the front end stepped to the side to let her in. Katie was lying among a disorienting mess of hands, tubes, and lines. They’d stripped off most of the green and white armor and cut through her suit to put electrodes on her chest. Katie was watching the confusing motion above her. They’d placed a pronged oxygen tube in her nose, and her cheek and chin were smeared with blood in various stages of drying. Her breaths were strained and coming in rattling gasps.

 

“Katie?”

 

Katie's eyes focused on hers, with that breathtaking intensity that Colleen had seen in no one else but her.  Colleen smiled and leaned in over the stretcher. She laid her hand over Katie's.

 

“That's really good,” said the medic by her elbow, nodding, “Keep talking to her.”

 

With her other hand, Colleen reached to Katie’s face and brushed away the tears that had mixed into the blood, even as she felt tears start running down her own.

 

“Hi, baby,” she said, softly, “You did such a good job.”

 

The corners of Katie’s mouth moved, between her gasps and around the tubing, into the smallest hint of a smile. Colleen squeezed her hand.

 

“I'm so proud of you.”

 

Gently, Katie squeezed back.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gentle constructive criticism (or, you know, exuberant praise) is welcome.

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes dying feels the right thing to do. During the weeks I was writing this, a person in my life committed suicide.  
> Reach out, find help.
> 
> Thanks for reading. Let me know what you think!


End file.
